\n Across TikTok and Instagram in particular, discovery is no longer driven by what a post is labelled as. It\u2019s driven by what it is, how people engage with it and whether it holds attention. That\u2019s a very different game.
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\n The end of manual labelling<\/b>
\n<\/p>\n
\n For years, hashtags were a crude but effective way of telling platforms what content was about. They were a form of manual categorisation – publisher-supplied metadata designed to help algorithms match content with audiences. That layer is no longer required.
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That has effectively removed the need for hashtags to act as a discovery mechanism.
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\n \u201cHistorically, they were the primary way a publisher told an algorithm how to categorise a piece of content,\u201d Luke Gosha, head of search and AI strategy at Edge Marketing, says.
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\n \u201cToday, the algorithms have advanced in their ability to understand content, its relevance to audiences and engagement.\u201d
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\n The shift is from explicit signals to inferred understanding.
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\n Platforms now analyse everything: what\u2019s said in a video, what appears on screen, how long people watch, whether they rewatch, whether they share, save or comment. Content is no longer indexed – it\u2019s interpreted.
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\n \u201cAI can now read your content the way a human does,\u201d Willis said. \u201cIt understands what the video is about, what tone it’s taking, who’s likely to care.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n \u201cYou don\u2019t need to tag it, you need to make it good,\u201d he added.
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\n Context, not\u00a0content, is now king<\/b>
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\n If the last decade of digital marketing was built on the idea that content is king, the current one is tilting toward something more nuanced. Context.
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\n \u201cA piece of content that taps into something people actually care about right now will outperform a perfectly hashtagged post every single time,\u201d Willis said.
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\n Bryce Coombe, managing director at Hypetap, goes further. \u201cContext and even subcontext are king. For a brand to succeed today, it\u2019s less about having the right campaign tag and more about delivering content the algorithm identifies as high engagement.\u201d
\n<\/p>\n
\n That shift is subtle but important. Content still matters, but it\u2019s no longer enough on its own. Timing, cultural relevance, tone and audience fit now carry more weight than structured tagging ever could.
\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cThe real shift is from structured tagging to behavioural and contextual signals,\u201d says Miki Sim, platforms and culture director at VaynerMedia APAC.
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\n \u201cThe algorithm no longer requires creators to manually label the content. It already knows what the content is about.\u201d
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\n Performance isn\u2019t tied to hashtags anymore<\/b>
\n<\/p>\n
\n One of the more telling aspects of the shift is how little impact hashtags now have on performance.
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\n \u201cIf hashtags disappeared tomorrow, would performance actually change? For most brands, barely,\u201d Willis said.
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